PAX 2008

PAX is upon us and I have been enjoying looking at all the latest in game development. Most of Friday I spent helping set up the booth and then after the place opened to press I tried looking around at other booths. I got some shots of the finished booths and then finally when the gates opened to the fans.

We had to buy our cursory t-shirts there and I picked up these shirts with art by one of my favorite pin-up artists.

There were a lot of cool things to look at this year. It was bigger and much more crowded than last year’s PAX. I was happy to not participate in any tournaments (this year’s main event on the PCs was Team Fortress 2). Most booths generated a good amount of excitement.

There was limited interested in Guild Wars. It’s been out for a while and with Blizzard, Bioware, Valve, and others showing off their latest and greatest it wasn’t too crazy. Regardless, we have some pretty dedicated fans. All our tournaments filled up, our swag all given away, and our after party was a huge success.

Henry destroyed our little camera so we’re in the process of replacement. In other words, every shot was taken on my cell phone so pardon the crappy 2 megapixel quality. I had to pick my parents up from the airport at around 3 on Saturday so I wasn’t able to get to PAX until almost 5. No worries, we’d seen most of the stuff the day before. It was the after party with free drinks, food, and conversation that made up for it. Being at Gameworks, Crystal took her gambling machine skills to new heights and won enough tickets to get Henry a few toys. I got a few tickets to invite friends to the party but everyone bailed. What’s new? Lame.

Next year’s PAX presence for ArenaNet will be much bigger being closer to the release of Guild Wars 2. The rest of our booth focused a lot on Aion, Tabula Rasa, and City of Heroes with only a couple machines dedicated to Exteel and Dungeon Runners. My only complaint about the booth design is that although it understandably showcased the NCSoft family of titles, it really didn’t allow for ArenaNet a lot of space to do the usual tournaments, fan games, and artist art signing that we do.